As the scale and scope of network-based applications and network-based services such as cloud computing and cloud-based storage services have increased, data centers may house hundreds or even thousands of host devices (e.g., web servers, application servers, data servers, etc.) on a network that may serve data to clients via one or more external networks such as the Internet. A data center network may generally include high capacity equipment (e.g., servers, switches, routers, load balancers, gateways, network interface controllers (NICs), cables, etc.) that is capable of bursting large amounts of data from the host devices onto the external network(s) to be routed to various destinations. However, the external network(s) may include network equipment that provides various packet queuing and bandwidth capabilities. For example, servers, load balancers, or other network equipment on the data center network may include NICs that are capable of 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) or higher throughput for outgoing data (e.g., Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) packets on TCP connections to client endpoints), while an external network may include equipment such as routers and servers that include NICs that are only able to handle 1 Gbps throughput. The external network equipment may queue some received packets when bursts of data are received, but in some cases the network equipment may not have the queuing capacity to handle the bursts of data, and some packets may be dropped. Thus, a path or link through the network infrastructure across the external network(s) to a client endpoint may not have the bandwidth and packet queuing capability to handle large bursts of data, and may thus drop packets at one or more network devices, or may experience other problems such as long round trip times (RTTs).
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include”, “including”, and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.